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Classic Literature. Fiction. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder's second novel, won him the first of his three Pulitzer Prizes. The novel opens in the aftermath of an inexplicable tragedy-a tiny footbridge in Peru breaks, and five travelers hurtle to their deaths. Most townspeople think to themselves with secret joy, "Within 10 minutes myself...." But for Brother Juniper, a humble Franciscan friar who witnesses the catastrophe, the question is inescapable: Why those five? Suddenly, Brother Juniper is committed to discover what manner of lives these five disparate people led-and whether it was divine intervention that took their lives, or a capricious fate. Wilder maintained in his works that true meaning and beauty are found in ordinary experience. This is especially true of The Bridge of San Luis Rey. From the very beginning to the stunning conclusion, the listener is absorbed into the individual stories of the five victims, and how their destinies intertwine.… (more)
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The result of all this diligence was an enormous book, which, as we shall see later, was publicly burned on a beautiful Spring morning in the great square. But there was a secret copy, and after a great many years and without much notice it found its way to the library of the University of San Martin. There it lies between the two great wooden covers collecting dust in a cupboard. It deals with one after another of the victims of the accident, cataloguing thousands of little facts and anecdotes and and testimonies, and concluding with a dignified passage describing why God had settled upon that person or upon that day for His demonstration of wisdom. Yet for all his diligence, Brother Juniper never knew the central passion of Doña Maria's life; nor of Uncle Pio's; not even of Esteban's. And I, who claim to know so much more, isn't it possible that even I have missed the very spring within the spring?
Some say that we shall never know, and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer day, and some say, on the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God...
Wilder, of course, doesn't explicitly answer these universal questions, though by novel's end, our narrator, Brother Juniper, eyewitness to the bridges collapse: "He saw the bridge divide and fling five gesticulating ants into the valley below..." certainly has answered some of them. Though in some socks-you-in-the-gut, harsh irony, Brother Juniper, after he's dared ask why -- why did these people die?, why did the bridge collapse for them instead of others? -- and then travelled by foot great distances to probe the lives and personal histories of those who fell for possible clues to answer the deeper questions of why that are only natural for an inquisitive mind's pursuit, ultimately becomes the sixth and final victim of San Luis Rey's collapse. Brother Juniper lacked the foresight in seeing how dangerous his questions were in a culture whose pious insularity accepted nothing less than rote avowals of faith in God's sovereign will. Moreover, Brother Juniper was stealing time from his ascetic commitments to solitude and prayer in order to play detective. In the least he was egregiously undisciplined; at worst, a heretic. But his fellow monks got it wrong. Because Brother Juniper sought in his investigations not to disprove his Catholic faith or the sovereignty of God, but to affirm his faith in God. Not surprisingly, Brother Juniper's rational, rather than preprogrammed-faith approach, in attempting to determine why those five perished when and where and how they perished, was condemned as insubordination and blasphemy, an unforgivable rejection of God's goodness and sovereignty. How dare a middling monk not take God automatically on faith! For the sin of suggesting God's will could be accessed through an investigation -- through empiricism -- Brother Juniper, a devout and faithful Catholic, became a martyr for science.
If there are any answers in this brutal universe that can explain how Evil and Human Suffering can comfortably coexist alongside a purported All-Good and Omnipotent God, a deity to be trusted and praised by its adherents even when disasters on a scale more monstrous than the collapse of a flimsy bridge in Peru occur ... say the collapse of the Twin Towers or the unending collapse that is Genocide ... then it's clear to me that Brother Juniper was successful in his quest.
Some fun facts: Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and graduated from Berkeley High School. The book launched him to immediate worldwide fame; his teaching salary at the time was $3,000 and the book made him $87,000 in 1928 alone, which is about a million dollars in today’s currency. Lastly, David Mitchell fans will recall the character Luisa Rey, named as an homage to this work, as well as perhaps recall the epigraph to Ghostwritten, taken from the end of the first chapter:
“And I, who claim to know so much more, isn’t it possible that even I have missed the very spring within the spring?
Some say that we shall never know and that to the gods we are like flies that the boys kill on a summer day, and some say, on the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.”
A couple of other quotes that I loved:
On literature:
“…the Conde delighted in her letters, but he thought that when he had enjoyed the style he had extracted all their richness and intention, missing (as most readers do) the whole purport of literature, which is the notation of the heart.”
And this one on love, which I found that Tony Blair used in a memorial service for British victims of 9/11:
“But soon we shall die and all memories of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."
The book is essentially a lesson in philosophy - exploring the meaning of love, the twists and turns of one's life amid the greater scheme of things, and whether death is fate or God's plan. There are not any real answers to any of the questions - just the questions.
Wilder writes in old fashioned language and the novella is set in a foreign country with all the subtle references to politics and religion of the time. I admit to getting dragged down in it all and struggled to slog through and finish the book.
Wilder's character development is one of the strengths of the book; and Wilder does this within a very few pages which speaks to his gift as a writer. My favorite characters were the twins Esteban and Manual and I think Wilder does an apt job of presenting their relationship to each other and the devastation of loss that occurs between them. Wilder connects all the central characters to each other...something that took me by surprise...sort of like the six degrees of separation theory. Because of this I expected a resolution to the ultimate question: Could it have been fate that plunged these people to their deaths? Or something larger? But, Wilder apparently never intended to provide an answer. In the afterword of the book I read, the publisher shares a letter from Wilder to one of his readers:
'The book is not supposed to solve. A vague comfort is supposed to hover above the unanswered questions, but it is not a theorem with its Q.E.D. The book is supposed to be as puzzling and distressing as the news that five of your friends died in an automobile accident.'
Perhaps had this been a non fiction philosophy text, I could accept Wilder's cop out on this issue. But, this is a work of fiction and I wanted the character of Brother Juniper to at least come to his own conclusion. Instead, the reader is left with an odd feeling of detachment.
Because this has been touted as a great work of literature, I wanted not only to like it, but to "get it." I'm sorry to say, neither of those things happened.
Not recommended.
The best stories are morality tales, and the best of those are ambiguous, leaving the reader or listener to draw their own conclusions. Wilder wrote a stunning example in The Bridge of San Luis Rey.
A short book (just 107 pages in my edition), Wilder writes in
What follows in Wilder’s book is an account of those five lives, all of which, in some fashion or another, are interconnected with one of them, the Marquesa de Montremayor.
Wilder’s language style appears to be deceptive simple, somehow fits perfectly with the era and the place. My edition has an afterword by Tappan Wilder, the author’s nephew, who discusses Wilder’s love of French literature and particularly the letters of the Marquese de Sévigné, on whom the Marquesa de Montremayor is modeled. The linguistic style of these 17th century letters with its emotional distance and irony imparts a powerful impact to the story, especially to the conclusion, which Tony Blair read at a memorial for those who died on September 11, 2001:
“But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves will be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”
There are few books that linger on in my mind after I read them, no matter how much I’ve enjoyed them. The Bridge of San Luis Rey is one of those precious few.
Highly recommended.
Each of these people had some connection to the Abbess of a convent. The final chapter find relatives of the victims visiting the Abbess. Each of the victims was loved by someone; some will be remembered by many and some will be forgotten, but there is a thread of love connecting all.
The story, such as it is, concerns the study by a man of the cloth of the tragedy of the fall of the eponymous bridge. He asks, could this have been God's plan?, and he spends years interviewing subjects to find out all about those who perished. It's a terribly sad story, full of meaning and truths half-forgotten, and written with such panache that it's hard to give this anything but full marks.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1928, this novel certainly qualifies as a classic. In my recent, long overdue, reading I found the style fitting for a tale of Peru with the prose evocative of the setting; however, the individual parts were uneven and only with the the story of Uncle Pio did I find the theme of love emerging in a meaningful way for me. Perhaps the opening story of the Marquesa and her daughter, with its layers of Catholicism, was too foreign for me to appreciate. The doppleganger existence of the twins, Esteban and Manuel, was also a strange interlude. Holding the story together like a thread of beautiful silk was the young Camila Perichole (based on a real person as was the Marquesa). Whatever the reason, the novel unfolded for me slowly and became a better read as I neared the ending with its famous sentence. The question of innocence and guilt and who deserves to die remains in my mind long after I laid the novel down. It is certainly one of the very best first novels that I have read and I will likely return to it.
In many of the reviews I've read of Thornton Wilder's outstanding The Bridge of San Luis Rey many have stated that Wilder leaves the main conclusion up to the reader. I must disagree.
This short book is rooted in Christian realism -- summed up in that final page. Life is a mystery to the believer. Seemingly saintly people die far too early in inexplicable circumstances-- a bridge that has lasted for centuries one day breaks under the weight of an old woman, a cripple, an old man, a young girl, and a young man. But the "why" is not for us to know. We all must live in the comfort that it is His will that reigns, not ours, and that the love which sustained us in this life will see us to the next.
No doubt, Brother Juniper found his answer. If not, I at least recognized mine.
Despite Brother Juniper’s efforts, there are no easy answers to be found in this slim, thought-provoking book. Certainly, there is no clear indication that Divine Intervention was responsible for the tragic incident, nor can we be sure that it was the result of pure chance. Readers must draw their own conclusions and there is no shortage of modern comparisons on which to reflect (e.g., 9/11, Japanese tsunami, Chilean earthquake).
I grew up thinking of Thornton Wilder as more of a playwright than a novelist; “The Bridge of San Luis Rey” was actually the first of his books that I read. What I think now is that Wilder was simply a splendid writer, regardless of his chosen form. This is a book that can be read quite quickly, but its images and the questions it poses will take you far longer to fully digest.
Five people in Peru are crossing a bridge when in an instant they all are plunging to their deaths in the valley below.
Certainly poetic in style this little novella invites the reader to think about
A classic that will never grow old.
This 1927 novel starts with: “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714,
The perfected brevity, the richness in personalities, the delicately intertwined lives, and the elegant prose were all a joy to read. I hungrily underlined far too many gems. Learning that it was a Pulitzer Prize winner of 1928 makes sense. Like many of today’s Pulitzer winners, I sense a touch of defiance of the norm, which in this case was the church – unforgiving, literal, Inquisition, and male dominated. As a contrast and balance, the Abbess played a nurturing role, and she too feels suffocated. While reading this book, I felt vibes of “Cloud Atlas”, likely because of the intertwined characters. I was surprised to learn from Wiki that David Mitchell had in fact named Luisa Rey after this book including her fall from the bridge. Go figure.
Some quotes:
In honor of its charming brevity, I’m keeping this short too despite the many smiley’s I wrote on margins.
On Literature – good writing needs heart!
“…the Conde delighted in her letters, but he thought that when he had enjoyed the style he had extracted all their richness and intention, missing (as most readers do) the whole purport of literature, which is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world.”
On Infatuation:
“It was not the first time that Manuel had been fascinated by a woman…, but it was the first time that his will and imagination had been thus overwhelmed. He had lost that privilege of simple nature, the dissociation of love and pleasure. Pleasure was no longer as simple as eating; it was being complicated by love. Now was the beginning that crazy loss of one’s self, that neglect of everything but one’s dramatic thoughts about the beloved…”
On Love – I love this:
“But soon we shall die and all memories of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."
Four stars for the elegance of the prose and the humor which redeem the work.
For those unfamiliar with the book, Wilder has invented a character, Brother Juniper, who wants to prove the existence of God scientifically. His method is to study the lives of five characters who plunged to their deaths when the Bridge of San Luis Rey (fictional) collapsed in Lima, Peru in the late eighteenth century. He hopes that through studying these five characters, he will be able to ascertain why their lives were suddenly ended by God, whether it be due to punishment for their sins or salvation due to their piety.
What follows is a brilliant study of the complexities of man and what makes us who we are as well as the difficulties of determining the existence of God and, if he exists, his nature. Wilder does a wonderful job of presenting the important questions about the meaning of our existence and the worth of individual lives without ever answering his questions. The end result is that book stays with the reader for hours after reading it as you try an unravel some of these philosophical questions on your own. I found it to be a thought-provoking book for the modern reader, just as I'm sure it was when it was first published in the 1920s, and I highly recommend it.
A bridge outside of Peru collapses, killing five people, and brother Juniper is determined to investigate the five, seemingly random, deaths. He is convinced that the lives of these five will reveal the hand of God; the role of providence in their fates.
Does it? Well, that's a question Wilder leaves very much to the reader. His mellifluous, allusive prose certainly contains enough for a dozen postulations, each as valid as the last. This makes the novella somewhat of a Gordian knot; essentially unsolveable.
There are other compensations, however. In a hundred pages, Wilder summons up a wonderful cast of characters. Each of the victims is built up swiftly, passionately, and efficiently. The characterisation ranges from children to old people, and it is comprehensive and solidly believable. Wilder's empathy with - and accuracy in portraying - such a varied cast is really exemplary.
Even beyond its five victims, The Bridge of San Luis Rey is peppered with intriguing people. A few meagre paragraphs is enough to conjure forth someone deserving of their own novel: The grief-stricken captain; the virtuous but corpulent priest; the urbane and rebellious daughter.
Married to Wilder's asynchronous prose - an-almost Romantic, heady and unmitigated style, yet not flowery for it - the novella is certainly an easy read. The supplementary materials included in this edition also provide much insight into his thoughts in writing it (though, I implore you to avoid the "foreword" unless you want the entire book outlined to you in five pages. I have no idea why anybody thought that was a good idea to include at start of the book).
Ultimately, because of the strengths of Wilder's writing, I found it impossible _not_ to think on this story, turning it over and around like a Rubik's Cube. And yet, the longer I did this, the more frustrated I became. The Bridge of San Luis Rey is not intended to be solved; it simply is. This zen-like quality may sit very well with some - and it's certainly thoughtful and worthy of thought. But for those of us used to a more conventional narrative it may frustrate somewhat. Nonetheless, an interesting novella and worth the attention it takes to get through the hundred-odd pages.